Dostoevsky’s French reception: from Vogüé, Gide, Shestov and Berdyaev to Marcel, Camus and Sartre (1880-1959)

McCabe, Alexander (2013) Dostoevsky’s French reception: from Vogüé, Gide, Shestov and Berdyaev to Marcel, Camus and Sartre (1880-1959). PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This history of Dostoevsky’s reception in France draws from critical responses, translation analysis, and the comparative analysis of adaptations as well as intertextual dialogues between fictional, critical and philosophical texts. It begins from the earliest translations and critical accounts of the 1880s and 1890s, such as Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé’s seminal moralist reading. It then traces modernist responses and adaptations from the turn of the century to the twenties. Existential readings and re-translations dating from the arrival of émigré critics and religious philosophers in the wake of the Russian Revolution are examined, assessing the contribution of these émigré readings to emerging existential readings and movements in France. Finally, French existentialist fiction is analysed in terms of its intertextual dialogue with Dostoevsky’s work and with speculative and critical writings of French existentialist thinkers on and around the philosophical reflections expressed in Dostoevsky’s fiction.

By following specifically the existential and existentialist branches of Dostoevsky’s French reception, an overlooked aspect of the history of French, Russian and European existentialisms comes to the fore, reframed within a pivotal period in the history of European intercultural exchange, and of transmodal literary and philosophical discourse.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: Dostoevsky, Sartre, Camus, Gide, Marcel, Berdyaev, Shestov, Vogüé, existential thought, existentialism, reception, translation studies, cosmopolitanism
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > PG Slavic, Baltic, Albanian languages and literature; P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General); P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism; P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0441 Literary History; P Language and Literature > PQ Romance literatures
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Modern Languages and Cultures > French
• Supervisor's Name: Fotiade, Dr. Ramona and Rogatchevski, Dr. Andrei
• Date of Award: 2013
• Depositing User: Dr Alexander McCabe
• Unique ID: glathesis:2013-4337
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 04 Jun 2013 11:24
• Last Modified: 04 Jun 2013 11:24
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/4337